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Question: What’s the use of the group’s seclusion at the Convention in the Arava desert?

Answer: We have gathered here to lay the foundation for a new society, whose purpose is to attain adhesion with the Creator. In order to attain adhesion with Him, we have to attain adhesion among us. And in order to attain adhesion among us, we have to unite, disconnecting from the disturbances of the outside world. After all, we’re small and we have to strengthen one another, so let the world not interfere with our doing so. That is why we are going to the desert.

In the past, groups of Kabbalists took much more extraordinary measures to isolate themselves from the external environment. A person has to allow himself a bit more freedom from this confused and senseless world, to collect himself inside a bit more and understand what his predestination is.

In the whirlwind of life, under the roar of the radio and television, you can’t make out the fine voice of your soul or attain the fragile inner inspiration. You simply don’t have the energy for it. Even Kabbalists living hundreds and thousands of years ago in a completely different world, which did not know the “wonders” of mass media, still secluded themselves, barring themselves from their habitual environment, and even “going into exile,” leaving home without taking anything with them and going off to wander for years, getting by with occasional earnings and food.

You don’t even know what you are losing in the modern world, which is stuffing and miring you with its filth. Do you want to attain something exalted? If you do, then what efforts are you making to break away from the lowlands?

It’s worthwhile for us to find time for this kind of seclusion where we will feel only our own forces, without the disturbances of the outside world. Let’s separate a day in life to feel who we are instead of who they are.

Obviously, we don’t force anyone to participate and we don’t make lists of participants or deserters. We don’t put check-marks for the future. Whoever doesn’t want to or can’t come just doesn’t come. In this sense, everything is very liberal and open. But on the other hand, if a person comes there, he has to participate in the actions that the group has assigned to help us detach from everything and feel only ourselves.

Don’t you sometimes wish to be alone with yourself? That is how the group wants to be alone with itself, to feel itself. You enter a room, close the door, and remain with your own thoughts. That is how we want to remain with our thoughts. In reality, this is clear and commonly accepted. But for us it’s not just a minute of rest, but a detachment from “the degree of women and children” and an ascent to the “men’s level.”

In the article, “The importance of the group,” Rabash writes, “When a person works on the true path, he needs to seclude himself from other people. After all, the path of truth requires fortification because it contradicts common notions. The world’s opinions are built upon knowledge and reception, whereas the Torah’s opinions are built upon faith and bestowal. And if a person is distracted, then he immediately forgets about all work on the path of the truth and falls into the world of self-love. Only in the group do the friends help one another, and therefore every person receives forces from it to fight the commonly accepted notions.”

The upper world is our inner world. We have to shift our gaze from externality to internality. Therefore, with the help of the friends, I try to go inside, to look inward, to acquire a deep wisdom, to attain the inner meaning of the Torah. There is no other choice—I need this.

A person must constantly immerse himself inward, penetrate into his depths—and precisely there he reveals the true world. The external world deliberately confuses us so through the conflict with it, upon the resistance, we would build our direction inward. Our struggle is to penetrate deeper and deeper on the background of this world’s reality, which pulls us outward.[60927]From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/16/11, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

One Comment

eferuch ~ Nov 17, 2011 at 12:37 pm

“When a person works on the true path, he needs to seclude himself from other people.”

Leonardo Da Vinci:

“If one is alone, he belongs completely to himself
if one shares the company of another person, he is only left with 50% of himself
if one shares the company of 2 other persons, he is only left with 30% of himself
and so on, until he disappears totally to himself”

Which has to be true on both sides tuma vkedusha, from total egoism to total freedom of the self.

In a desert of this world, the still level of this world, almost void of vegetative and animals elements. Certainly a great place to be.